Never Said the Words
by 1001Characters
Summary: My one-shot AU version of the Red/Lizzie hotel scene from ep. 202


For the 'Liz is Jealous' Prompt. Don't know how I feel about this one, reviews are welcome.

Never Said the Words

Liz wasn't surprised to find his door unlocked and Dembe seemingly nowhere to be found. He knew she would come tonight, if for no other reason than to explain exactly what she'd been thinking. She owed him that much.

Red stood by the window, in his vest and shirt sleeves a tumbler of Scotch dangling from his fingers. She could make out his reflection in the window watching her as she approached. Stopping just at his shoulder, Liz took a deep breath as she reached for his glass. Bringing it to her lips she took a healthy swallow. He hadn't turned to face her, keeping his head cocked in her direction: waiting.

"I am so sorry for the way I behaved earlier," she paused the words she's rehearsed on the drive from the Post Office ringing hollow in her mind. Still she pressed on. "I was_"

"Jealous," he offered succinctly, finally turning to face her. He crowded over her looking down, annoyance and disapproval darkening his eyes. "You were jealous of a woman I haven't seen in 20 years."

"She's not just some woman," Liz ground out, hating herself for the petulance in her tone. She stepped away dropping on the edge of the coffee table. "She's your wife, the mother of your child, the only woman you've ever said those words to. Of your own admission, you've never said them to anyone else."

Her voice had risen with every statement, the last just short of a shriek.

Red was silent. Looking down at Lizzie, her face streaked with tears, her knuckles white clutched around the edge of the table. He was angry with her; angry that she hadn't been honest with him about her feelings at his wife's return. He had been absolutely livid to find out Liz had frozen the accounts, sending him and a woman she didn't even know to certain death. Her obvious twinge of conscious at the last possible moment had done nothing to sooth his ire at her.

"Red?"

"You're right, Lizzie. She was my wife, the mother of my child, the only woman I've ever confessed to being in love with so you can see how I would be opposed to her being dismantled by some psychopath. You used your badge and your influence over that poor fool Aram to punish a woman who has done nothing to you!" He breathed deep. "If this is what… my being in your life has done… I'm the one who's sorry, Lizzie."

The finality in his voice, pushing Liz to her feet, she grabbed his arms when he would turn away. She could feel the tension in rigid posture, the muscle beneath his eye jumping against his will. Liz has seen him this angry, but never with her.

The romantic side of their relationship was still new, emerging in those first frenzied months searching out Berlin before he'd descended on them in earnest. Bringing Naomi back into Red's life and throwing Liz's into disarray. Red had thrown all of himself and his business into tracking down his ex-wife and rescuing her, even engineering the take down of the Monarch Douglas Bank.

He had disappeared on her, effectively cutting her out of the search for Berlin. Out of his thoughts and his life; abandoning their life and Liz had been angry. So much so that she had pushed him to choose by taking away his means to bargain for Naomi's life.

He hadn't hesitated in his decision.

"I wasn't worried about Madeline," she said to his chest. "What's between us was just happening then, but I knew she was in your past. And traveling with you and running across these women from every part of the world; as beautiful and worldly as they were… None of them ever made me feel like I could lose you, Ray. But Naomi Highland," she let out a nervous huff of a laugh. "Mrs. Reddington."

"You never asked me, Lizzie," he whispered. "You just conjured up this idea of me riding off into the sunset with my ex-wife and never once talked to me about any of it. I was just as blindsided as you to discover she was alive and yes I was crazy with fear that maniac could kill her. And yes, I put everything I had into finding her because she didn't deserve to die for my sins and because she is undoubtedly the only link to my daughter. If she dies Jennifer is lost to me forever. This had nothing to do with reviving a dead love, Lizzie." Red reached up laying his palm against her face. "I don't need to," he pronounced his gaze boring into hers. "I don't want to. I'm the green-eyed monster, Lizzie, not you."

Slipping her arms around his neck, Liz felt the tension around them break as his hands latched onto her waist, pulling her closer. "You're my green-eyed monster. I'm sorry for not being honest with you. Not trusting what we have."

"I've never said the words, not because they were reserved for her. I just never thought they were enough for you. I've lost love and lived through it. I could never delude myself into thinking I could survive if you left me, Lizzie. I love you. I cherish you. I need you. I forsake _all_ others for you. And considering everything you've had to forgive..."

Leaning forward, Red carefully kissed away her tears, murmuring words of love and devotion as he made his way to her lips. They'd shared many kisses, but this one was something different. It tasted of truth and promises, consuming and freeing all at once. It robbed her of her breath and gave her life. It was an epilogue and a prelude.

Her life has Elizabeth Keen had ended and Lizzie Reddington was born.


End file.
